Down with the government of corruption, unemployment and budget cuts

The Comisiones Obreras and the UGT must call a general strike now! Let us fight for a Revolutionary Constituent Assembly!

February 18, 2013

Thursday, February 7, 2013

The most recent information about the BÃ¡rcenas case, published by El PaÃ­s exposes still further the real nature of the political regime born from the Transition and all its institutions.

In recent months, we workers and people have been seeing how, at the same time that they are launching the worst attacks since the dictatorship on our living and working conditions, unemployment has skyrocketed, over 6 million, almost two million jobless are without any income whatsoever, hundreds of thousands of families have been evicted and left in the streets â€¦ It comes to light how all the parties of the regime, the judiciary, different municipal and autonomous governments, now the central government itself and the Prime Minister and the monarchy itself, have been lining their pockets with their hands full.

The person who pays, also gives the orders

The documents published by El PaÃ­s show that the Partido Popular (PP) got more than 11 million euros â€œunofficiallyâ€ in little more than a decade. Which decade? Exactly the one that coincides with the biggest real-estate bubble of our history, the one that, when it burst, opened up a crisis for which we are paying, as always, with unspeakable sufferings. In 1997 the Aznar government passed the Land Law, that opened the way to the most brutal housing speculation. Who were the main beneficiaries? The big construction companies and banking, that made a lot of money for themselves, both in contracts for public works, and in housing construction with increasingly higher prices that consumed wages and forced millions to have to go into debt.

And who are the main donors of that â€œbox Bâ€ ? Construction firms like Sacyr Vallehermoso, FCC, OHL... What a coincidence! That the banks are not among the donors does not change them into an â€œungratefulâ€ sector; simply, current legislation directly allows financial bribery, makes it easier. Santander, BBVA, las Cajas... were paying for favors with profitable credits, deferments and debt cancellations for the parties that were legislating â€œso well.â€ Let us say that there is a distribution of roles adjusted to the legal framework that they themselves are violating. Builders and businessmen were filling up box â€œB,â€ and the banks, box â€œA,â€ by other means, more legal, but just as corrupt.

And who were the ones sharing the loot? Apparently, BÃ¡rcenas made its own the maxim, â€œThe one who distributes, takes away the best part.â€ It has 22 million in Switzerland, and it is not to be ruled out that it could have more in other fiscal paradises. But, failing to discover this, and if, in addition to the â€œpapersâ€ discovered, there are no other â€œCâ€ ,â€ â€œD,â€ or â€œZâ€ boxes, the â€œcompensationsâ€ for such â€œgoodâ€ politics were shared among the PP leadership, certainly including the current Prime Minister of the government, with packets amounting to 25,000 euros per year.

The entire regime is corrupt

No one is escaping. UrdangarÃ­n and the Infanta Cristina, the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Juan Carlos Divar, the trial of the judiciary against GarzÃ³n because of the GÃ¼rtel case, the Bustos case or the Andalusian staff cutbacks (EREs) that implicate the PSOE, GÃ¼rtel and BÃ¡rcenas [implicating] the PP, the Palau case, the ITV contracts and the illegal financing of UniÃ³ and Convergencia... In all these cases, there is a common guest: big construction firms or public services contract firms. They are all an example of the close relationships of these parties and institutions with the employers. The BÃ¡rsenas case is only the most obscene of them. And if any doubt remained that this is the hallmark of this â€œdemocracy for the rich,â€ one has only to see how most of the accused end up acquitted, and those who are convicted, are soon pardoned by the government, like the famous Servitje Roca, former Minister of Labor with Jordi Pujol, and his colleague Lorenzo AcuÃ±a. Who can be surprised then that all the laws and measures promoted by them will pursue the aim of saving businessmen from the crisis, at the expense of the workers and groups of the poor?

For a response with the working class in front: For a general strike against Rajoyâ€™s government

Mobilizations that are emerging precisely in a situation of increasing social unrest, that is expressed every day in protest actions, strikes, street and highway blockades throughout the state, and that turned 2012 into the year with the most days on strike in recent times, with two calls for a general strike, the minersâ€™ strike and the strike in public education... It is possible, then, that this crisis of the government and all the resources of the regime, this crisis from above, will make it easier for us to be able, from below, to strike with more force at the government that is passing the worst budget cuts since the dictatorship.

Meanwhile, the government and Rajoy remain silent, and the PP simply denies most, although several prominent people included on the BÃ¡rcenas list admit to having already received those amounts. Their extreme wing, with Aguirre as head, is studying its possibilities of prospering in the Spanish right wing. The PSOE is trying to take advantage of the opportunity, but it is difficult for it to soar, after having been the pioneer in the politics of austerity, and being involved up to its eyebrows in the whole quagmire of corruption. Even Arthur Mas wants to look after number one, as if he thus wanted to cover up his own cases of corruption or the 4 billion euros in cuts that he wants to load onto the shoulders of the workers and people of Catalonia in 2013.

The slogan that has begun to circulate in these mobilizations is that of â€œGovernment resignation.â€ The Izquierda Unida, through Cayo Lara, came out to ask for the resignation of Rajoy and the calling of early elections. In the TVE breakfasts, FernÃ¡ndez Toxo asked for the same thing, if the information from El PaÃ­s were confirmed. But is a â€œregenerationâ€ of this regime possible, perhaps? The investigatory commission against corruption that the IU is proposing in Parliament, by whom would it be formed? By the very parties that are behind the main scandals! It would be judge and jury, everything rolled into one. You donâ€™t have to be a legal expert to realize that it would be a farce, as the many investigatory commissions of the Cortes, or, more recently, that of the fraudulent EREâ€™s [staff reductions] in the Junta of Andalusia, have been.

From Clase contra Clase, we support and are part of all these mobilizations that, undoubtedly, are weakening the government and the regime still more, from continuing to beat us up. We are joining the massive rejection of the PP Government with the perspective that the mobilization of workers and the poor will be able to overthrow this government, to bring it down. However, we cannot share the illusions in a possible â€œdemocratic regeneration,â€ that parties like the IU or the union bureaucracy consciously instill, in order to try to limit the objectives to a kind of â€œreformâ€ of the regime of 1978 or a â€œnew Transition.â€ It is not accidental that precisely two of the founders of this regime, the PCE and the leaders of the CCOO and the UGT, are the main spokespersons of this line. They have the experience of their exploit of 1978, diverting the workersâ€™ and popular mobilization, in order to prevent a revolutionary process that could really resolve all the democratic problems and put an end to the big social problems. In this task, the PSOE will also be delighted, once more, to lend its services.

This regime is corrupt from the dome, the Crown, to the foundations, and no reform is possible. The only way of putting an end to this corrupt democracy, with the anti-worker offensive that we are suffering in the centers of work and public services, of resolving democratic questions, like the exercise of the right of self-determination of the nationalities, putting an end to the monarchy and all the inheritances from Francoâ€™s rule â€¦ is precisely by overthrowing the Regime of 1978 through the workersâ€™ and peopleâ€™s mobilization, in order to impose a Revolutionary Constituent Assembly. That is, to open up a real, free and sovereign constituent process, in which we will be able to discuss and resolve all these questions, without any limitation, where it will be possible to discuss and approve the expropriation of the big capitalists, in order to put an end to problems like unemployment, poverty, and evictions, to imprison all the corrupt people without exception, the self-determination of Catalonia and the Basque country...

A process like that is not going to be convened, nor permitted, by the PSOE, nor the PP or the Crown. This crisis shows in a crude manner the validity of that maxim of the Communist Manifesto that â€œNow, the public power is coming to be, purely and simply, the administrative council that manages the collective interests of the bourgeois class.â€

For that reason, we are far from any fantasy of democratic â€œregenerationâ€ in the frameworks of this democracy for the rich, and opposed to those who are already asking for a constituent process that came from the current Cortes or the current government, that would only be a new â€œfarce,â€ like the first Cortes of SuÃ¡rez, where the current Constitution was cooked up. From Clase contra Clase, we believe that it is necessary to fight, in the prospect of overthrowing this government â€“ and other â€œreplacementâ€ governments that could follow it â€“ so that the regime falls with it, and a government of the workers and the people is imposed, the only one capable of convoking a really democratic and sovereign Constituent Assembly.